Dictated by visible full-form spirit materializations
through
the mediumship of William W. Aber

CHAPTER VII
Vocalizations of Thomas Paine

The reader should revert to the portrait at paragraph 2308, and review
paragraphs 1128 and 1129, and in his mind see that form stand before him, and
hear the utterance by that form in finished oratory of the wonderful statements
as he reads them, in order to fully realize himself as pondering over the
utterances of one from beyond the tomb.

But the reader may ask: How were these orations committed to paper?

If the reader would ask any person who attended these séances, he would be
told that the secretary took notes, more or less full, of the orations as being
made, and was then able to reproduce the words of the spirit on paper and read
them to the next meeting of the circle, and that such report the circle
generally found to be exactly as the spirit had uttered, so far as the circle
could determine.

In this way, the wonderful words were preserved, and are finally before the
reader in printed form, very nearly as the spirit in full-form, visible
materialization uttered them, from time to time in these séances as set
set forth in this book.

Oration No. 1 The So-called Church a
Hindrance to Progress

When I was on earth, it was a great part of my work to do battle on
the festering priesthood.

Since in the higher life, I have seen that the so-called Church is one
of the greatest hindrances to progress and a barrier to post-mortem felicity.

I am determined to and will do all I can to tear down and remove from
the highway of unfoldment such blockades to human evolution.

Oration No. 2 This Spirit Finds No Such
Person as the Theological Orthodox God

I want to say again, that I find that most of my efforts in the mortal
to uproot superstition were right, and I am now determined to do all I can to
down those nefarious institutions whose ultimate effect is degradation and
blasting of future fruition of so many thousands—yea, millions of earth's
innocent, trusting, priest-ridden people.

There is no evidence on earth or in spirit life that there ever did exist a
man such as they say is God.

Oration No. 3
I Am He Who Stood as a 'True Blue' for My Country and for Your Country

Good-evening, friends. I expect you to know who I am before I go.

I am he who stood as a 'true blue' for my country and for your country,
putting all my energies into the work of building an asylum of liberty for the
soul-environed of all lands, of all people yet to be.

I did do battle as a true soldier for the cause of human progress.

Brave soldiers are needed now to plant the standard farther up the hill
and to prevent its trailing.

I come to tell you of our thankfulness to you for your regards to us.

Go on, and you will find your great reward.

Oration No. 4
An Exhortation for Disciples of This Truth to Stand Firmly Together in the Cause

I suppose you think I am still with you and so I am but farther on in
the scale of being.

When I was in my studio on earth, I was engaged in a warfare for human
liberty—liberty whereby the children of men, unawed by any kind of sacerdotalism,
might be permitted to steer their own barks, whithersoever they might desire,
out upon the great ocean of possibilities, with banners to the topmost
inscribed: As to my own individuality, I, too, shall become Lord of Lords and
King of Kings.

But now I am in something better than my earthly studio. Standing in
the light of higher schools than those of earth, I am here to say that this
mythology that hangs like a dark cloud over the souls of men, shutting out the
sweet sunshine of the spirit world, must come down, must be dissolved away.

Stand firm, my friends; be not swept away by the wild, rolling, muddy
torrents that the coming down of those clouds must produce, and you will have
your reward.

Question: You must have been somewhat inspired to write your 'Common Sense'?

Spirit: My hand was guided to write that book. And I am Thomas Paine,
that alleged infidel who cared not for the venomously barbed slanderousness of a
mercenary priestcraft. Several noble souls of immortal glory helped me in my
earthly studio, and now I propose to write something back to you.

The reader should review the séance record of this wonderful materialization,
paragraphs 246-249.

I wish to say to you, I am going on toward the prize of an all
radiantly glorious unfoldment.

When I was on earth, I was persecuted. Little children were taught to
mock me upon the streets. There was no hell dark, dismal, sulphurous enough in
which to punish me for my alleged heresies. Slanderous tongues made their slimy
trail in the very air concerning me.

But you can say to them that Thomas Paine passed to the higher life in
peace, assured of the fact that no God of vengeance or an endless hell awaited
him; and that, some time, somewhere, beyond all hells, in the sweet sunshine of
loving beneficence, his most bitter enemies of earth and Thomas Paine would be
loving brothers, although the people, some of them, thought me so strangely
wicked, indeed, that to their minds no mode of mortal punishment had ever been
invented but what was too good for me.

But oh, the rapturous joy and ineffable delight that met me among the
beautiful hills that rise on the evergreen shore! I was met and hailed by my
dear friends and comrades gone before, as a brave soul that dared to live his
honest convictions and abide the consequences.

The happiness I have enjoyed in this delightful abode since coming
here is worth more than all the millions of dollars—dollars, did I say? No, no;
not dollars! The language of mortals is too poor to express the thrilling joys
of an awakened soul in this beautiful 'summer land of song.'

Now, friends, you can make yourselves as happy as I have been, if you suffer
no fetters to make you slaves. I am now a free man, and shall continue on this
joyous highway, drinking the richest essences of heavenly delight, ages and
ages.

We cannot resist the temptation to here state that there is an
eloquence attending the vocalization of this spirit, Thomas Paine, that probably
was seldom, if ever, surpassed by mortal man.

Oration No. 6
No Personal God Outside of and Above Nature

'Is there a God !' in sarcastic exclamation; then a direct question: Is
there a God?

Yes, there is. I am a god, you are a god, everything is God—that is,
Good.

But as to the general understanding of the existence of a personal God,
outside of and above Nature, there is no such thing or being.

In that sense, then, there is no God.

My friends, the trouble with your world is this God idea.

Your wars are all emanations of this God idea. Your
governments are all run upon the common God idea.

While, in founding your government, we very nearly eliminated the God
idea, yet the idea of centralization was left in it; and, for the most part it
is administered under the God idea now.

Not until the last vestige of the God idea, with its concomitant the
priesthood, is educated out of your governments and the people's minds, will
there be no more crying for bread in a land of plenty, answered only by giving a
stone.

Tyranny and oppression will cease only when the people learn that
there is no supreme tyrant but ignorance.

There is no God, my friends, who takes delight in making little babes
for the glory of seeing them languish in an endless hell, just because their
forefathers disobeyed the voice of this God.

Listen to that God saying to these little innocents as their pitiful
cries go out on eternity: 'Ah, you little wretches cry and whine on forever!
Good enough for you. Your grand father would not obey my voice; therefore you
must wail on to all eternity.'

No, there is no God as taught by the common theologian. Every nation
and people that lift the sword in defence of a God thereby admit just what I
tell you now: That such God is not omnipotent; and if not omnipotent, he is no
God as that word is used to signify.

The God of theology, of modern Christendom, is so unable to take care
of himself that the vast machinery of your governments is continually being
evoked in his behalf.

If some little child, like this boy here, tries to hear and learn of
the realities of eternal life for himself, government must be evoked to shut off
the avenues by which he may learn it.

But time nor eternity will rob this young lad of the great facts he
learns here.

While his comrades will, some time, have to unlearn all the notions of a
false God promulgated beneath tall steeples at the expense of millions and
millions of dollars and of millions more of worse than wasted lives, as the
great book of Nature will some day reveal to man the theological ignorance of
the world; and while, to one by one, the fact be revealed, in the life
beyond—this boy will have a soul rich in eternal truth, and in pity will lend a
helping hand to the spiritual paupers of theological schools as such paupers
land upon this side of life. Yea, this boy, whom they think their God will send
to hell, will gladly meet them from upper glory with bread of life for their own
hungry souls.

Now, friends, let no one mistake or misrepresent me as touching the God idea,
therefore let me here repeat what has heretofore been uttered and written in
this arena and in your presence, to-wit: That our conception of God, as the
governor of all nature, is universal law, within and not outside of nature. This
law eternally inherent in nature, and by which all things are evolved and
formed. This is our conception of God, who needs no salaried sacerdotal
protection.

Oration No. 7
The Highest and Best Religion—Hell and Heaven, the Tree as against the
Theological—The True and Only Savior—What and Where the Spirit World

In answer to G. H. Walser's question 17, What is the highest
religion? spirit Paine said:

The highest, best, and most purifying and ennobling religion is
Spiritualism—pure and simple.

It is the best on earth and the only one you find in higher life.

When your spirit eyes are opened on this inexpressibly delightful home amid
the sweetest songs of myriads of happy celestials, you will soon be a
Spiritualist—and you will stay one during all the ages, and only be ashamed
that you acted so foolishly in not accepting the glorious gospel of this eternal
truth while on earth.

But Spiritualism is baffling the world of thought on your side today as
never before, and one by one the chains of ignorance, superstition, prejudice,
and cowardice are being broken asunder, and soon you wilI begin to learn that it
is a primary school for the higher life; and when that lesson is once learned by
a people, government will begin to be modified in the mutual interest of all the
children in that primary school.

You are therefore serving the highest good you possibly can when using in
wisdom your energies to assist the angel world to dispel dark clouds and mists
from blinding the vision of mortals to that religion that must endure.

Spirit: Now, Mr. Secretary, read your next question.

Question 18: Is there a hell and a, heaven, as alleged by common theologians
to he taught by the Bible?

Spirit: If you mean a personal hell, I say, most emphatically, there is.
You make it yourselves. It has already been said, or rather written, here by the
good brother Reed:

The hell is in your own soul.

The most of the hell you see in your fellow-being is smoke ascending
from the hell within yourself.

The less hell you have in yourself, the less of it you see in your
neighbor.

There is no escape from your personal hells but by restitution to
offended law, and that restitution must be personal. Another cannot restore for
you. Restitution is your only savior.

God, or Good, may blot out from the book of remembrance of God; but no
God or son of God, except yourself, can blot out from the book of your own
remembrance.

When your eyes be opened on this side of life, you will see the book
of your remembrance open to yourself and to the whole spirit world.

By you, your misdirections will he read in sorrow and anguish; but by
good angels, in pity and great compassion.

If you mean a local hell of literal fire and brimstone set by some
fanciful theologic God or established by any God, I say to you there is no such
hell of eternal burning.

No being, except a totally depraved one, could make such a hell, in
which to eternally punish one of his own children for doing just what, as a God,
he must have known, even before he made the child, it would do.

All the hell there ever was or ever will be must be disciplinary
only, and cannot be unending in duration to any child of man.

Spirit: Read the next question.

Question 19: Where is the spirit world?

The spirit, in answer, rising to an emphatic posture and with outstretched
hands, exclaimed in most emphatic tones:

Everywhere. There is no space where the spirit world is not.

(Question 20.) The degrees are infinite, but for convenience we may
generalize into six degrees of the primary condition beyond the earth condition.

Your natural home in spirit life on first entry there is in such of these
degrees as you may be fitted by your earthly evolution.

(Question 21.) If your earth life has but poorly developed you, your first
home in spirit life will be in lowest degree or first sphere.

From this your evolution goes on; and, one by one, you ascend, as
climbing a ladder, to the highest sphere.

Very few persons are ever prepared in earth life for the sixth sphere or
degree of unfoldment.

Beyond all this, another condition, the celestial, higher, or ethereal
sphere—the heavenly paradise into which, from the highest attainments of the
sixth sphere, the etherealized spirit passes on to higher, grander, more
glorious beatitudes.

Question: The greatest spiritual sin?

Spirit: Yourself.

Question: Is the spirit subject to disease and decay?

Spirit: Just this much: they feel a more or less sympathetic attachment
to their friends, and, when in their sphere, or rather aura, suffer in sympathy
as they.

Oration No. 8
One Josie, a Medium, was Manufactured into the Theological Jesus

And still they tell you there is a hell as generally preached from the
pulpit.

I want to say to you that the only hell to you is made by yourself. When
you are lonely and despondent, you are so, sometimes, because you have driven
the good angels away. Be assured that you have hosts of loving friends on the
spirit side of life who would at all times be glad to help you in hours of
darkness.

Sorrowing mothers have, bending over them, the supposed lost ones,
doing all they can for the stricken mother, whose theology keeps the gates to
the inner life closed, so the dear child that otherwise could and would give
comfort to the mourning parent, is prevented by reason of false teaching; and
the spirit, while near the mother, feels also aggrieved and sorrowful; but, when
away in the ethereal, this sorrow and sadness is not experienced by the spirit,
for the law of sympathy, that in the one case takes on the mother's conditions,
in the other takes on the serene joy and gladness of the upper and indescribably
beautiful surroundings and sweet music of the glorified ones there.

I am doing all I can to remove from earth the barriers set up, by the
priesthood, to the sweet 'communion of the saints.'

I have been called, and am even now called, a traitor, which greatly
grieves me when I sense the earthly sphere.

Those who made and make such charges against Thomas Paine will one day
feel their ingratitude.

I did the best I could with the light I had, when on earth. I made
mistakes—even animals make mistakes. The grass, the flowers, the trees
sometimes live and act erroneously; but yet, they do the best they can.

When life began to manifest in the atomie, as the good brothers
Denton, Reed, and Faraday have said, it worked up to protoplasm state, and
thence slowly, by degrees, to lowest, thence on to highest types of man.

The manifestations of lowest types of man were, to them, the highest
possible attainments of the race; and here their God idea fixed a finality—and
they were averse to having any intimations of anything beyond—but, it was a
mistake.

The next advance was thought, by itself, to be the 'Ultima Thule';
but it, too, was mistaken.

Today, however, it begins to appear that every thought of an 'Ultima
Thule' of theology, of revelation, of the unfoldment of the rational, thinking,
conscious ego, is a mistake —-and that there is no 'Ultima Thule.'

So I made mistakes—committed errors. I advanced what I thought right as
to education, but I was mistaken about that.

Here we have schools the same as you on earth; and we have to learn
the same way that you learn.

We take our lessons step by step as you do. We graduate in one school
preparatory to another, and another, and another—we are always on the go.

We have musical schools, medical schools (not to learn how to decently
slaughter people).

Our diplomas are not 'for no more beyond,' but preparatory to an
infinite beyond.

If you believe in such a man as Jesus as per the record of such a
one, you must believe in some other mode of healing than what is called materia
medica.

His method is called marvelous because it is beyond the limit set up by
your schools; but in a little while your schools will begin to recognize that it
was not direct intervention of some God, but only by natural law, with which God
had the same but no more to do than he had with 'running lightning down
Franklin's kite-strings.'

Mr. Paine, you say that Jesus as taught today is a theological myth. How,
then, shall we regard the pictures we receive and the alleged appearances we
have of him?

Paine: That is all right. There was a man whose true name was Josie, who
had medium powers not near so good as our medium here; but our medium is no more
Jesus—that is, 'a savior'—than any other man or boy. He is no God; he is only
Will Aber. No more God for having the gift of mediumship than some other person
is God on account of his gift of music.

There is no proof, either on earth or in spirit life, that the Bible
personality called Jesus Christ, as preached today, ever existed.

Question: Was that man Josie baptized in the river Jordan?

Paine: I don't know whether he was baptized in the river Jordan or in
the St. Lawrence, but he was baptized; and, at the time, out of ridicule, was
called Jesus; though his real name was Josie. He had the gifts of a common
medium only, and never the alleged properties of a savior.

If you were passing along and were to meet a crowd of roughs who would
plunge you into a mud-hole and mockingly call you Ingersoll, and say, 'How are
you, Bob?' it would not make you the great Ingersoll; you would still be Mr.
Nixon.

Well, that is just the way that Josie got to be a savior and finally the
'Lord God of the universe.' I do not ask you to believe this. Do as you like
about that. I asked for proof of the theological allegations, and was satisfied
with nothing else. No such proof was ever given me on earth, and since coming
here I have found enough to convince me of what I have told you of the existence
of one Josie.

Question: Were you assisted in your work on earth?

Paine: I was inspired. Some good angel stooped to do me honor in giving
some direction to my pen and trend of thought.

Oration No. 9
Thomas Paine is Back Here to Tell to the World What He Knows Now

Good-evening, friends. I am glad to meet you here in this way.

0ur glorious work is moving on, and I am truly glad that it is progressing
with such rapid strides throughout the world. No discovery in the domain of
science ever yet made greater progress among the people in a single half-century
as the great scientific fact of a demonstrable future for man has since its
enunciation—less than fifty years ago.

Yet strange indeed is it that so great a boon to the race must fight its
way everywhere.

Fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, brothers, and sisters,
everywhere mourning, sorrowing, weeping, waiting, as they look into the desolate
grave or behold the empty chair ! Will not hear the good news, will not look as the angels draw the vail aside.

And when the white-robed kindred 'over there' would draw near, would
sing again the old home refrain, they are driven away; the gentle caressing of
an angel mother is denounced as the scheming of some diabolical fiend.

Oh, friends! When I look upon the floods of tears that might be dried
away, when I behold the millions of sorrowing hearts that might be comforted,
but for the intervention of a designing priesthood who live fat upon the sorrowings of desolate hearts, my soul sickens and determines me to go on with
the warfare of breaking the fetters that bind so many millions of precious
souls to a mercenary sacerdotalism founded on the fables of an imaginary God.

This God, through the priesthood as his medium, has in all ages
fought with fire and sword, shot and shell, gibbet and guillotine, prison and
proscription, slang and slander, the advocates of the advent into your earth
among the children of men of anything calculated to lessen the iron grip that
the priest has had upon men and women.

They would murder a Bruno for daring to think for himself.

They would lead upon the scaffold an innocent Quaker woman because it
was reported that an angry God had said:

'Suffer not a witch to live.'

In the infancy of astronomy its advocates must recant or burn at the
stake because this imaginary leader of the priest-hood had been reported as
saying something about the four corners of the earth.

The great science of phrenology was tabooed because it was at variance
with the supposed teaching of their supposed God; and geology, too, must be
scoffed because it teaches that, instead of the six days of creation, millions
of ages were consumed.

Thus, step by step, science has shown that the theological ideas of
God are false, and that what the theologians have heretofore taught to be the
true God have not been and are not God at all, but merely false or ignorant
conceptions of the true God.

Oh, if my orthodox friends were here tonight, I would scorch them to the
very quick; only desiring, however, to give them exchange their remaining
ignorance for eternal truth.

I do not come back here for nothing, nor to advocate theories : but to tell
you what I know.

Spirit: Yes, they talk here the same as the rest of us; but if they come
to you in any other than their earthly mode, you do not recognize them; besides,
when coming into your aura, they take on their old earthly habits more or less,
anyway.

If I should appear to you as I sat in my studio writing my book, you
would not recognize me. I must come as near as possible in my everyday life, as
understood by you, that you may recognize me.

Now I would thank you for a further subject. Do not be long about it, as
I cannot stay. Well, inasmuch as you do not think of a suitable theme, I believe
I would prefer 'Reincarnation,'

Let me say to you that reincarnation as Buddha taught is a myth, is
not right. But when you pass to the higher or highest spheres, and come back in
a temporarily reconstructed body, as you behold me now, that is a reincarnation
that is true, and is the only reincarnation of which I have been enabled to
learn anything on this side of life.

The idea that you are the individualized entity that once was the soul
of the lion, the dog, the cat, and that after awhile you will leave your
position in the Higher life and again on earth take up your abode as the soul of
the serpent, the toad, or the elephant, is only theory with theorizers, but is
not with me.

Why not stay in the lion, in the first place, and not be compelled,
after a life of conscious bliss and high intellectuality among the good angels,
to go back to prison in some lion?

On earth I meditated much on that subject, and, from all that I could
learn in regard thereto, was as much opposed to this myth as to Bible myths.

When anyone tells you that he distinctly remembers having lived in a
certain lion, and that his wife was once a lioness, you can set that down as an
unwarrantable stretch of the imagination.

No friends, that is not true. You may have some of the traits of the
lion, the wildcat, the deadly cobra, in yourself, as I have told you; but you do
not again crawl even into your old bodies after once they are completely lain
aside, much less back into the lower animals. After your conscious entity is
once evolved from the rocks it never goes back to the rocks to begin a
reincarnation of itself. Its course is not in a circle, but in a straight line.

Another question now comes to me as among the myths: 'Christian Science.'

They say that is close to Spiritualism. In one sense that may be; that
is, in the sense that their alleged cures are by the spirits in their presence.

The so-called Christian Scientists do not cure from their own brains.
Their cures are from the spirit side. We come down the shinning highway and
lead on this movement. They wish to arrogate to themselves all the glory, for
which we care nothing, so the suffering be relieved.

There is no science in it or about it, except that when we find an
instrument that we can use for good, we do so.

But some people are afraid of their shadows; and, instead of calling
themselves mediums for the use of the angel world, they proclaim a scientific
discovery and name it Christian Science. But the Christian Science is just as
offensive to the nostrils of the priesthood and Mother Grundy, as would be the
simple truth: Intervention of spirits.

If I were in all orthodox crowd, I would talk just the same.

I want to say something about that grand, good man on your side of life
who is following in my footsteps.

Mr. Ingersoll, as noble as any soul of your earth, is doing more good
for the world than all the priesthood of entire Christendom. He is as much of a
Spiritualist as I am, but he has his work to do, in his own way and right
gallantly he is doing it. He went the other evening to see a medium in Boston. I
saw him there. I was so glad to see my good brother engaging and preparing for
the good work. He did not see me as he could if he were here. We can often see
you when you do not see us.

Oh, what a terrible myth is that orthodox hell! This myth does such
sad havoc as to be itself almost a real hell, working as great disasters,
almost, as is alleged of the mythological Satanic Majesty.

How hard for the yearning mother to be told that her darling child is in
hell torments eternally, just because he failed to understand that mythical plan
of salvation!

Why any wife, or mother, or child, should be told in the sad hour of
bereavement that the loved one gone over is languishing in eternal hell-fire
prepared by an all loving and merciful God for all those who do not accept the
mythical way such God has prepared for escape from the visitation of divine
wrath, I don't know.

Oration No. 11
Error Dies Hard—Good and Evil of Bible to the World Compared—Materialization

On our side of life, we take great interest in the promulgation of
such as we see to be of advantage to you mortals. More interest, in fact, we
take than you realize. But we differ as you do. It seems to me that any person
of ordinary brains would investigate this beautiful philosophy. But so many are
just beating along, caring for nothing but something to eat and wear. So many
more are so crowded to the wall for a mere pittance; and, as society is now
organized, with a very large portion of your people the whole aim and highest,
purpose in life is to beat some one. If men knew we were here, they would do
better.

What man or woman, in the face of a knowledge of the fact that his dear
departed are hovering around him and know his every act, but what would be
likely to stop and think before doing any rash act?

This knowledge of spirit communion is bound to favorably modify human
action, passions, and desires.

On earth, when I was working purely to unshackle the souls of the
people and break them away from that theology that yet keeps the world in
ignorance, doubt, and gloom, I was ridiculed. And you are and will be ridiculed
for endeavoring to lift the vail and let in the light.

Whenever persons do so ridicule, it shows you are troubling them.

Error dies hard—hissing serpent-tongued maledictions on the devoted
heads of those who would destroy error to make way for truth.

It seems that this phase of light is not new, but you are getting it
first-hand.

If you had an instrument to fully note my speeches, I would talk to the
world now as never even while in the mortal.

Now that Bible. You read novels, you read fiction, you read fable.
Deflect back to your Bible and search out all the good it contains, and you will
find how very small space would contain it all. One hundred pages would more
than contain all the real good contained in the Bible. Ten thousand pages would
not contain all the bad and fully portray its degrading results to the world.
The meanness, the vileness, the lasciviousness in that book would sweep anyone
over Niagara Falls into a whirlpool and oblivion below, who is not by nature
proof against being led astray by such licentious reading.

Little Nellie says she never was born. When she so states, she means
that the spirituality always existed, had no beginning—only transmutation.

None of us was ever born in the sense that birth is the beginning of
existence.

I thought it my duty to give you all the light I could, but here I am,
frail, frail indeed, in connection with this frail body, which is made up of
particles we get from the air, the circle, and the medium. These particles held
together by a spirit magnetic force which we are enabled to use temporarily
under strictly chemical conditions, and these conditions make a channel for
conveyance of thought to you that must partake of the nature of the circle, the
medium, and present atmospheric and chemical surroundings.

This body of mine here is so easily destroyed that any adverse
chemical wave or loss of chemical cohesion destroys it.

It is as strange to me as it is to you that I can stand here and talk
at all. I do not understand it. It is a high grade of chemical specialists here
in spirit life that do sufficiently understand it to make it possible. By the
help of their knowledge, wisdom, and skill, I am enabled to speak to you through
my own temporary body, which I can only hold until the vitality of the magnetism
used for the purpose is exhausted.

It is an easy matter to use the body of a mortal by the law of obsession, but
the most difficult and highest phase of spirit manifestations is that produced
by means of a spirit artificial body, commonly called spirit materialization.

The Doctor has not written so scientifically as usual; but perhaps it
is as well to have something for the common understanding as any way.

In looking around, I see your country is going down, down toward
bankruptcy; and do you know that, without some wise statesmanship, it will soon
be there? You are on the verge of a financial crisis; if not by wisdom averted,
it will shake your nation as it has never yet been shaken since its founding.

We, as spirits, can modify the calamity, but influences are now at
work that will cause the world to tremble on its Titanic foundations.

You speak of smart men, Such you have had to guide your ship of state,
but they are gone. Instead of smart men, you now have selfish men, working not
for you, but for themselves, for the few rich, to the enslavement of the many.

Your smartest men that are gone come not back except in spirit.

Whenever you lose one of them to earthlife it is better for you,
because they can do more good for the world from the spirit side than they could
from the mortal side.

Than Baron von Humboldt your earth never produced a grander soul. He
gathered from all sources, from all the ages. He has his great garnerings with
him here in eternal life, of which he can now and for the coming ages dispense
to the needy, to the hungering, and thereby feed the famishing; and the very act
of so giving, instead of depleting, increases the treasures of his own garners.

Other great minds who have gathered on earth are continually ascending
to spirit life glittering all over with their accumulated jewels, which on earth
were not utilized; but now, for the benefit of themselves and the soul-hungry
sentient beings of earth and sky—and their stores eternally increasing.

These are they who were not using their entire earth lives trying to
make fortunes out of somebody else.

These are they who in reality make your inventions of today, as some
time you will know. But they make them for the benefit of man, not for the sole
benefit of financial slave-drivers, backed up by hireling legislative, judicial,
and administrative departments.

Many of these men to whom are given many of these great inventions at
once conclude themselves the 'Great I Am,' and claim them for themselves and
capital gobbles them; and, instead of a blessing, the capital slave-driver,
protected by his government in so doing, forges these designed blessings into
more galling fetters to manacle the poor, toiling producer.

Oh, if I could call around me here a thousand or two thousand of these
slave-masters, I would tell them of the wrongs and outrages they are
perpetrating upon the race, upon unborn generations. But all these nabobs will
have their reward, and that much less than even a 'mess of pottage.'

Oh, friends, how it grieves me and good angels to see and know that
the millions of innocent babes are ushered into your world to become toiling
slaves to a false social system, all growing out of a false religion!

See those innocents now, so happy on mother's bosom! Little do those
sweet babes know why mother alternately weeps and smiles. Little do they know
the slings and barbed arrows awaiting them along life's thorny pathway. Little
do they know that they have to spend a long life on earth toiling to support a
priesthood and financial aristocracy, and die at last and go to an endless hell
prepared for the devil and his angels, just because they are too poor to have a
first-class funeral ! Herod yet slays the innocents! Little do the non-producing
idle ministry know which way the sword of Dives is cutting, or they would not
continually, everywhere make themselves both principal and particeps criminis in
all this foul wrong to the children of men.

Little do they know that one day they, from the home of Dives, will
see the poor Lazarus, whom they consign to hell, afar off in the Paradise
(Abraham's bosom), ready on call, with palms to cool the brow and a cup of water
for the parching tongue.

I can go through your convents now, your so-called benevolent
institutions. I can look with pitying meditation into the hearts of homeless
women! What terrible brutal sensuality exercised by man over woman in all these
and everywhere! See that poor woman yonder, working day by day at starvation
wages to make a meager support for her lone self and sweet little innocent
babe! But what of the wretch who brought her so? What will become of him?
Society takes him to its bosom. The Church takes him to her folds. He is allowed
to go back into the cloister. Society can't go on without him because he is
rich. The Church must hush the scandal for his sake, because he liberally
patronizes the contribution-box.

But the poor unfortunate woman! The Church, society, all pass her by on
the other side. She sees flowers strewn by other fair hands in the path over
which that wretch of a man is treading as he too does pass her by with a sneer!

The mists will clear away some time. Bye and bye the angels will see
justice done. Restitution must be made. Lonely retribution, as the wrongdoer, in
the face of all the angel world, and in their pity too, will be compelled to
read from the tablets of his own memory the record of all his earthly doings,
will be his doom.

The intervention of no savior will ever be able to blot from the book
of one's own remembrance. This is hell from which there is no escape but to pass
through it, making restitution as you go; and no plan of salvation other than
complete restitution will ever be efficacious in working you out of that hell.

Could men and women know of the false foundation of present socialism
on earth, and of the near approach of the gardens of immortality, they would no
longer work their lives away for mere clothing, bread, and butter; but would
have a condition of things that would enable them to better utilize their time
for the requirements of both earth and spirit life.

And to this end the angel world is trying to roll back the dark clouds of
ignorance and selfishness that so darken the way for you mortals.

Oration No. 13
Schools Ought to Embrace Something More Than Financial Grabology—Some
Geography of the Pupils Future Country Should be Taught

Your schools should not be solely for the purpose of learning schemes
by which to hoard the almighty dollars. You want schools to make men and
women—not to make dollars.

You study compound interest, and algebra, and trigonometry and such
things. I knew about them once. What good did all that do me? Very little, I
assure you. What is your common-school education for? To prepare you to become
useful and ornamental citizens of the earth. And just as you have learned to use
your education in a way to cheat the poor producers out of their labor, you have
become citizens of another country.

A country that your schools will not allow you to know anything about.
Your Citizenship of that country in duration is as a thousand years compared to
a single second of your lives on earth.

Not one single true purpose of real existence is allowed to be taught
in your schools.

A false modesty even prevents the teaching of true womanhood.

You teach your children from first to last to become liars. On some
peculiar morning when a second or third voice is added to the family circle, you
call the other little fellows and say: 'Oh, Johnny, look here! What a pretty
little sister the doctor brought you last night!' or, worse yet: 'Oh, see here!
how good God is to bring us another little brother!' Why, if you tell anything,
don't you tell the children the truth? They find out, sooner or later, that you
lied about it.

There is nothing in nature or Nature's laws that is sin, and it is
only sin to teach falsehood instead of the truth in regard to any department of
nature. So much false teaching, so much false modesty, so much false theology.

I have said before that I have visited your institutions and there
learned much as to the wrongful management of affairs.

I say again, your country is in a terrible situation.

And now Theosophy strikes it. A condemnable doctrinal arrogance that
would be a curse to any people! Friends, little do you know the strategy on this
side of life. Little do you know the ways and means used in working out those
stratagems. Knowing the wily snares set to capture your little band and spoil
our work here, we thought best to hold the medium in safe hands and not open the
doors of the physical manifestations in your dark circle.

I am always waiting at your circles and your medium is always guarded by an
efficient band of noble souls.